Pottermore Delays Opening to New Users for 'Immediate Future'

Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s interactive Harry Potter web site that will also be the exclusive vendor of Harry Potter e-books, will remain in Beta for longer than anticipated and will also go offline for “a few days” starting tomorrow. Pottermore opened for experimentation and feedback for a select 1 million Harry Potter fans starting in late summer and was scheduled to open to the wider public starting in October. The launch of the Pottermore shop was previously postponed until the first half of 2012.

“After looking closely at all the information that we’ve gathered, we have decided to further extend the Beta period so we can improve Pottermore before giving more people access,” said an announcement on the Pottermore blog. “This means the site will not be opening to new users in the immediate future, but please know that we will open registration as soon as we can.”

Last month, Charlie Redmayne, formerly chief digital officer at HarperCollins, announced he was leaving the book publisher to become CEO of Pottermore.

Comments

This has dissappointed many of us fans just FYI first of all those of us who haven’t gotten early access were told to ‘just wait a month’ then again ‘oh it’ll take one more month. All this was fine and Dandy until the third extension came out. We have been waiting well over the set date to JUST REGISTER with the damn Site. Many of us are starting to give up/lose interest because of this, this is not just me saying this but several others out there.

Pottermore is a good idea but i dont like waiting the stories is only the 50% o fmy hate for not being able to get in the other 50% is having to wait to buy the ebooks >.> they could atleast release the purchasing section of that to the public

This looks really bad on the site. I am fine with waiting, I’m just talking about the millions of angry Harry Potter fans out there. They should have publicised the site right before they were positive they were finished. The beta thing should have been chiller, so nobody really knew much of it, and right after they knew the site was done, bam they should have began advertising like heck. By now, many people have forgotten about the site.

I feel that we should be able to go on it. I don’t find this at all fair, after all we have been waiting for a very long time. I couldn’t get on for the beta because I work two jobs and go to school. Yet here I am checking the site each day to see if it is up. I am about to give up on this and I was really excited to play on it. I don’t find it very fair and the fact that you guys don’t fix it just means that you guys don’t care about us as potter fans. I am extremely disappointed.

I’ve basically almost just give up. At this rate there are already rumours about it never opening to the public. We’ve been waiting months and I am actually really disappointed. If they let in 1000 people a week or something then the system wouldn’t become so overrun all at once because once people did their sorting and getting their wand they don’t do an awful lot.

They should let us start registering then email 1000 a week or something until they can just fully open it.

Would’ve been fine if they had said from the beginning that it would take a while. Thing is, I would rather be told to wait until 2012 from the very beginning than be given two extensions after being told I would only have to wait about a month.

Please, open the site. Ive been waiting since october. I didnt want to be a beta tester because of how busy i am with school, after school activites, and family. Im really upset. I try to be patient, but its just making me lose interest. I would be surprised if the site finally opened of october 2012!!!!! :(

I think that it’s mostly just unfair that –while I’m sure most fans of Harry Potter will not stop being loyal to this wonderful story– there are people who (in beta) can have access, and have for months, while many other fans sit and wait. If the website is having problems, it’s unfair that others are entitled to be a part of this experience, but not others. While I understand that you can’t make many improvements without the feedback of the beta users, I just find it to be a little hurtful. We all expected more, sooner, and were really excited. And now we’re finding we’re waiting even longer. I think this should be opened to the public; just like any social network, you could always make improvements as people are already members, I’m sure everyone would be okay with the idea that not everything is perfect.

I am huge fan of HP and every thing related so i wanted to be fair and i only registered one email during summer when all the rest of people had like 10 emails so they all won. I feel really dissapointed and angry i am waiting since July !!!! And i check every day if it is opened. So if before i loved JK.Rowling now i hate her.

All my friends are on and I’ve heard how cool it is. I really want to get on all ready it’s been months and I am starting to doubt if it will ever open. At the least they should post the next date they think it will be open. Even though those dates have failed us so many times already.

This is just outrageously disappointing. We were promised end of October 2011, and now it’s February 2012. So many people are losing interest, and I can’t pretend I’m not one of them. They shouldn’t have announced anything until they had their stuff together.